Monday, December 20, 2010

Clearly, roughly 1,300 email senders is more than a handful. On the other hand, 1,300 people wouldn't be enough to sell out one performance of "Wicked" on Broadway. More to the point, it represents a tiny fraction of the Times' overall readership. If our results are accurate—and a Times spokeswoman confirmed that the list is based on individual senders and did not have any disagreement with this story's methodology—out of the 30-plus million Times website visitors each month, it takes only one out of every 25,000 emailing a particular story to secure it a spot, at least for a day, in the hallowed most-emailed list. (The Times spokeswoman did indicate that hitting the No. 1 spot would have required significantly more email senders.)